Who should win (and who will win) the Oscars

Slumdog Millionaire probably will win an Oscar, but should it?

Photograph by: IMDB
, IMDB

Everyone talks about the Academy Awards, but no one does anything about them. That changes today as we jump the gun to tell you who should win - and, more important, who will win - in the top categories when the Oscars are handed out on Sunday night.

BEST PICTURE

Should win: Milk. This biopic about the life and death of gay politician Harvey Milk is not only astute, it presents a believable re-creation of the 1970s and populates it with a cast of characters who - more than any other American film this year - teem with authentic life.

Will win: Slumdog Millionaire. It also teems with life, although of the more sentimental kind. But it is more heartwarming than any other movie on this list, and its changing tones - from comedy to tragedy to romance - seemed to delight audiences. It's also won the most important indicator awards, including a nod from the Director's Guild of America.

Too bad about: The Dark Knight, the year's box office champion, which was as slick and entertaining as you want in a superhero movie, but was also a textured examination of the nature of heroism.

BEST ACTOR

Should win: Sean Penn. He's never been better than he is in his portrait of Harvey Milk, the San Francisco shopkeeper who becomes a leader of the gay movement. Penn shows tenderness, toughness, self-deprecation and fatal arrogance in the most complex movie performance in memory.

Will win: Mickey Rourke. He's big, he's heartbroken, he's lovable. Rourke's turn as a down-and-out fighter in The Wrestler is so close to the bone you're not sure how much of it is acting, and its symbolic weight - the broken-down actor playing the broken-down athlete - will be too much for the Academy to ignore.

Too bad about: Clint Eastwood, whose performance in Gran Torino as a sort of aging Dirty Harry - Archie Bunker with a rifle - was a watchable work of grumpy self-parody.

BEST ACTRESS

Should win: Melissa Leo. This little-known performer gives such an unaffected performance as a desperate but strong-willed mother in Frozen River that you sometimes wonder if it's acting. Deglamorized and artless, Leo doesn't make one false step in her low-budget movie about poverty in upper New York State: she has none of the big drama of Angelina Jolie, for instance, in Changeling, but she is totally convincing.

Will win: Kate Winslet. The Reader has caused much controversy because of its apparent sympathy for her character, a former Nazi guard, but some of that comes from Winslet's fearless performance. This isn't her best work - indeed, she was better as the unhappy housewife in Revolutionary Road - and it was pushed as a supporting role. Nevertheless, this is her sixth nomination without a win: she's due.

Too bad about: Sally Hawkins, who managed to make unbridled optimism seem like a good thing as the endlessly chirpy schoolteacher in Happy-Go-Lucky.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Should win: Heath Ledger. He's the one sure thing, and not just because a posthumous Oscar represents a way for Hollywood to honour a tragic death. Ledger's Joker in The Dark Knight deserves the award on its own merits: frightening, madly alive, oddly sympathetic, this is one of the great movie villains. Ledger brought a Method craft to a startling role.

Should win: Marisa Tomei. They laughed when she won the Oscar for My Cousin Vinny, but Tomei has proven herself through the years. Her stripper-with-a- heart-of-gold in The Wrestler could have been a cliche, but Tomei gives herself to the part and turns her into a flesh-and-blood woman, at once tragic and indomitable.

Will win: Penelope Cruz. She brought Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona to life with her performance as the fiery ex-wife of Javier Bardem. She's also part of one of those real-life stories that seem to be irresistible at Oscar time: a sexy, successful Spanish actress, she comes to Hollywood only to be misused (Vanilla Sky, All the Pretty Horses, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Tom Cruise), and then returns to Spain, where her natural earthiness is allowed to bloom.

Too bad about: Lena Olin, in dual roles as a Holocaust survivor and her daughter, who gives The Reader a dignified, heartbreaking authenticity.

BEST DIRECTOR

Should win: Gus Van Sant. A director best known for edgier projects, he brought to Milk a mixture of mainstream and independent sensibilities that ideally match the film: the use of archival footage, the careful re-creation of San Francisco's Castro district, the raucous mood of a movement getting started. It's also a well-controlled film that leaves room for many excellent performances, including Oscar-nominated turns by Penn and Supporting Actor nominee Josh Brolin.

Will win: Danny Boyle. He's got all the important early nods - the DGA, the Golden Globe - and he's riding the hottest horse in the race, Slumdog Millionaire. Boyle's work is both visually interesting and dramatically intimate, and he worked under difficult circumstances - with a mostly foreign cast far from his home -adeptly juggling the movie's many moods.

Too bad about: Darren Aronofsky, who bounced back from the fiasco of The Fountain to turn The Wrestler into a gritty portrait of tenacity.

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